Our Latest Recycle Project

We've had a crazy amount of rain here in the Pacific Northwest this month.  It's made it a little difficult for my husband to work at the projects he was supposed to be doing on other people's houses, b/c they needed to be done on drier days, so...yep, I got to have him home, and working on some projects for our house! Usually, it never fails, no work, no money, but we have time. When we have the work and money, we don't have the time. But he's done some pretty creative recycle projects that really didn't cost us much.
My twin sons were wanting their own rooms. I had the extra room filled with all my Etsy junk treasures, and my sewing stuff, my crafting stuff, and somehow it even had stuff in there that my husband would put in there b/c he didn't know where else to put it. In other words, it was a mess. But with selling vintage on Etsy, you need space to keep the stuff, space to photograph the stuff, and space to work with it and actually wrap and mail it off. So, here's one of my boys begging for a room, and what's a mom to do??  Well, I asked my husband if our smaller covered back porch with the hot tub on it would be able to be made into a work room for me. He was actually really motivated with this honey-do, and yes, he made me an amazing studio to work in. I love being outside, and the room he made me is the next best thing to being outdoors.
He had made a rather rare mistake with ordering a lady's windows a year ago. She had wanted grid windows at first, then changed her mind, and he forgot to change the order. It could have been a $2,000 mistake, but the window company gave him a tool to use to change out the glass and he was able to do it for only a $600. loss. Thus, we ended up owning many windows and a slider that had no frames. Well, my tricky sweetheart put the windows in my new studio, the old fashioned way, like they did in days past. And I have to say, I am just loving my little hideaway! These windows of course, don't open, but he did have an old 1950s push out window from another remodel job that works well for the breeze. I have to say, I'm really pleased with it, AND we were able to use up the glass we already had. My sons are happy to have their own rooms, and all is well.  It's amazing the things you can do with recycled stuff!   And you can bet I remember to tell my husband how much I love and am thankful for the way he spoils me!  (I added some photos, but excuse the messes.)

And since I'm on the recycle subject....I had been BEGGING for a long time for my husband to put soffitting on my front porch. When I am sitting in my chair in the mornings visiting with him, and he's telling me about what's on his mind, my A.D.D. takes over, and I start wandering off the conversation, and invariably, I'd start staring at the ugle porch roof that I could see from my chair. It just drove me crazy! Well, he had some vinyl siding that came from another remodel he'd done, and we were going to use it for a hay barn eventually.  We didn't know if this would work, but he went out and got a few pieces and tacked it up to see, and YES!! The vinyl siding has now been recycled into the ceiling of my porch, nice and clean and grey colored. It brightened up my porch a lot! We were pretty excited to see that it worked, and it cost....NOTHING! I'm loving it!  Hope this inspires you to make use of what you have!

Before, see the difference it's making?

Ceiling finished! Am I loving it? YES!!